


a sign from the sun

by antukini



Series: madatobi week 2020 [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Blind Senju Tobirama, Brother Feels, M/M, MadaTobi Week 2020, Pre-Relationship, despite how ominous the summary is no one dies, red eyes are blessed au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25223005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antukini/pseuds/antukini
Summary: Tobirama didn't anticipate his first steps into the frontlines would be his last.
Relationships: Senju Hashirama & Senju Tobirama, Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: madatobi week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811245
Comments: 28
Kudos: 602
Collections: MadaTobi Week 2020, Uchiha Quirks Squad





	a sign from the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Madatobi Week 2 Prompts: ~~A/B/O AU~~ OR ~~Demons and Angels AU~~ || **Red eyes are blessed** OR ~~Magically bonded~~
> 
> my titling is still fucking horrible but what's new

Tobirama dons his armor with the help of his brother. 

Heavy. Far heavier than the lightweight armor he usually uses in his missions. It clacks loudly as he moves ever so slightly, unfit for the assassinations and recon missions he is oft assigned. He feels it as a physical manifestation of the expectations put on his shoulders.

He puts on his happuri, his brother’s gift, embedded with protective seals, a solid weight on his face, sweeping bangs from his forehead, his sealed blindfold unobstructed for the world to see.

It’ll be his first time fighting in the front lines. The number of capable Senju frontline fighters had declined in the past skirmishes at their borders, opposing clans growing bolder in the wake of his father’s death at the hands of the Hagoromo and the sudden shift in the leadership of the clan in Hashirama’s hands, and his clan has been forced to take Tobirama out of the shadows and into the limelight in the hopes of him evening the field in the wake of their absence. In hopes that the techniques he’s invented for his own sake, those that his clansmen could not use, would turn the tides.

It’ll be the first time he fights alongside his brother like he’s always wished. The first time he won’t be barred from aiding his brother and keeping that lively forest chakra bright and pulsing and alive.

His fur collar is put over his armor, the texture a familiar comfort brushing against his neck and cheeks. His shoulders relax the slightest bit at the familiar weight.

Hashirama’s hands land on his shoulders, on his plated armor, both his hands and chakra a reassuring weight. Tobirama feels Hashirama come closer and lean his forehead on his.

Hashirama takes a deep breath. “Ready?”

Tobirama brings his hands up to Hashirama’s face, fingers skimming across his features. He takes a deep breath, eyes behind a firmly tied blindfold squeezing tightly shut, then relaxes, putting distance between their faces. His voice doesn’t waver when he says, “Of course.”

Hashirama pats his shoulder once more, his chakra, dimmed with nervousness before, lightening with what Tobirama assumes is a smile.

“Let’s go.”

—

Tobirama takes position near his brother, the slightest bit behind him, as they run to the skirmish to the east. He takes in the Senju signatures—four, as Hashirama had briefed him, still alive but edging on chakra exhaustion; the Uchiha encountering them aren’t faring well either—, catalogs them as he goes. The incoming Uchiha forces are near the same number as theirs, all similarly fire-natured at their cores, blazing in his senses. He has to remember to numb his senses else he would lose himself in the sheer amount of information, this isn’t an assassination mission where he has to take in everything. He narrows his focus.

They arrive not long after. Hashirama immediately engages with Uchiha Madara’s sun-blazing-warm chakra while Tobirama cuts through the Uchiha in his way until he clashes with Uchiha Izuna—the fire-crackling-lightning chakra the closest relative to Madara’s—, blades screeching when the Uchiha parries his cutting blow.

Their blades shake as they fight for purchase, the metal screaming as they try to cut through the other.

They spring apart, the sensor feeling a quick pulse of curiosity in the Uchiha’s chakra. He doesn’t pause, his left hand leaves his tsuka and rushes through handsigns, calling a whip of water from thin air, moving through the air with a vicious crack.

His opponent dodges and retaliates with a fireball which Tobirama douses immediately after. He feels the Uchiha’s chakra rushing to his eyes’ tenketsu points, activating his sharingan as steam hisses and spreads throughout the clearing, filling his lungs as he breathes in.

Cracklingfirelightning chakra lunges forward, blade singing. The Senju gathers water in his mouth and spits them out as senbon as he puts his sword on guard in front of him.

The Uchiha rolls to the side to avoid the jutsu and springs back up, Tobirama is ready to meet his blade once again.

Firesunwind and earthforestlife chakra suddenly flare in his senses, cutting through his narrowed focus. He’s almost too late dodging Izuna’s blade coming for his head, the blade singing beside his ear, nearly kissing his cheek. He counters immediately with a kick to the torso, sending him flying back.

Tobirama feels wind brushing against his temple and his cheek with a jolt of shock.

Uchiha Izuna had cut through his blindfold.

The cloth falls. The firecracklinglightning chakra suddenly stops as unseeing, red, red eyes widen in surprise.

—

Izuna’s sword almost slips from his hands at what the white-haired Senju’s—one he has never met before; he doesn’t understand why, this unnamed Senju is strong; why would they keep him away from the frontlines—blindfold has been hiding. Red eyes. The color of fresh blood, brighter than the shade of the sharingan.

A Blessed. What the fuck is one of Amaterasu’s Blessed doing here?!

In the midst of his great incredulity, he doesn’t realize he said that out loud. For at least half the entire battlefield to hear.

—

“What the fuck is one of Amaterasu’s Blessed doing here?!” Izuna’s voice breaks Madara’s concentration and he almost gets impaled by a wooden branch accompanied with overtures for peace shouted by a cheery voice before he leaps away for distance.

_What._

It seems he needn’t leap away from Hashirama anyway when the Senju immediately turns away with a heavy pulse of chakra and sunshins to the side of the white-haired shinobi that had been fighting Izuna.

He vaguely registers the sudden halt of the Uchiha within his sensing range. A quick glance shows him a sudden halt to the battlefield, everyone with curious but on-guard stances. A tense, unspoken ceasefire.

He follows and reappears beside Izuna’s flailing form. The unfamiliar stormwaterocean chakra rings through his chakra sense, pulsing with an undercurrent of protectiveness. Well, more irritation now, as Hashirama visibly fusses over him, back turned on the Uchiha siblings, hiding him from view.

Forest and ocean chakra intertwine, the forest smothering in worry and the ocean huffily batting it away, aware in the way the lively chakra isn’t. The new shinobi is a sensor. A _strong_ sensor. Who—

“Tobiramaaaaaa,” Hashirama whines, as his hands flutter about the Senju shinobi’s person.

“I’m _fine_ , anija. Calm down. Just a scratch.”

“But this is your first time out on the battlefield and—”

“Could you _not_ —”

He turns away from the fretting Senju to look over his brother for any injuries. No, he doesn’t flutter his hands over his brother, that would just be embarrassing for them both.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Just— A _Blessed_ ,” his brother hisses under his breath as he bats gloved hands away, eyes still on the water-natured shinobi. He turns to look again.

The white-haired shinobi—Hashirama’s _brother_ , apparently—pushes Hashirama’s fretting hands and his person away to the side and bends to pick up a fallen strip of cloth. When Tobirama straightened back up, Madara can clearly see sharp and red, red eyes the color of fresh blood amidst sharp features framed by a happuri engraved with the Senju kamon, head adorned with white hair that looks as bright as the sun above.

A _Blessed_ on this particular battlefield. He looks up at the sunny sky in askance. Amaterasu-sama, is this a sign?

He looks back at the Senju brothers and sees the shorter one tugging at Hashirama’s sleeve and then the other just outright producing thread— _what_ —which the white-haired shinobi takes and threads to a needle—from _where_?!—to fix the sliced cloth in his hands with a few, blurringly-fast stitches.

“Hashirama,” Madara calls. Hashirama turns around with a bright smile but Madara doesn’t miss how he keeps himself in front of his brother. Tobirama looks right at them as if unafraid of their sharingan, the red eyes don’t seem to focus. Is he blind? He shakes his thoughts back to the now, focusing on Hashirama who looks right into his eyes.

“Madara! Have you considered my offer?”

Madara doesn’t need to think hard. “Fine.”

The abrupt declaration shocks the Senju for a split second before a smile almost as bright as Amaterasu’s blinding light splits his face. He starts blubbering about how happy he is before Tobirama hits the back of his head to calm him. It doesn’t really work.

Seeing as Hashirama won’t be calming down anytime soon, Tobirama speaks instead, unfocused red eyes still bare for the world to see, “We will send the terms in a week’s time.”

Madara nods in acknowledgment, quelling the giddy feeling blooming in his chest. He can yell later. _Later_ , he tells himself as he looks at the gorgeous Blessed stood in front of them, seemingly unbothered with the limpet his brother has turned into hanging on his person.

He turns and bellows for his clansmen to head home. He feels the Senju do the same. His chest feels tight.

As he runs home with his clansmen in his sensing range, his mind can’t help but remind him of promises of peace voiced at a river.

—

They are off the battlefield so instead of being wrapped around his head, his blindfold is wrapped on his wrist. The seals giving him the ability to sharpen his chakra sense and, in a sense, “see” the world with a crispness—not too dissimilar to the Hyuuga’s byakugan, he’d been told—, though not as sharply as when it is wrapped around his head, on his eyes. He has to remind himself to blink every once in a while.

Sat at his brother’s right on the negotiating table, Tobirama’s skin is prickling all over at the feeling of what feels like every Uchiha’s eyes on him. They’re not at all hostile, their chakra even thrum with what feels like awe. Even so, he’s unused to such a level of focus and interest placed on him, having lived most of his life in the shadows. It makes his hackles nearly raise.

He focuses back on the negotiations instead, speaking up as needed and nudging Hashirama back into focus when he starts gushing his excitement again. The feeling of being watched doesn’t abate and even increases whenever he opens his mouth to speak but he keeps himself as calm as he can.

Hashirama and Tobirama had finally worn down their stubborn elders into agreeing to the negotiations after nearly two weeks of meetings and strong-arming and what-have-you since that skirmish. Tobirama is glad to have finally gotten through that mess without any murder or maiming though he had been very much tempted to do so. He could have done it, assassination _is_ his specialty after all.

He’s pleased that the scrolls of peace treaties that he’d written and refined since his anija had come home to him from meeting his Uchiha friend had finally been used to draft the terms for negotiation.

(It still pains him to not have been able to aid his brother and his friend at the river because he’d been assigned to a mission in Uzushiogakure. It took him three days after the fact to get home and console his brother.)

Finally, the meeting comes to an end with the first draft of the terms ready to take back to their clans and review.

Then Madara asked for everyone save the clan heads and the clan heirs to leave.

Tobirama isn’t very surprised. The Uchiha clan head’s chakra is still bubbling with nervousness and eagerness. He’s not sure what for but all of the Uchihas’ chakra had started flickering and flashing into that state as the meeting ended. Curious.

Hashirama bids the Senju delegation to leave, cheery as ever, chakra swirling happily. They leave with minimal fuss, Touka taking a pause and turning to them, chakra thrumming like a drumbeat of warning. Tobirama nods her way and she finally leaves.

Silence falls in the room as both Uchiha seem to be fidgeting, aborted motions to speak plain to anyone with every aborted inhale Tobirama hears.

Hashirama waits patiently, reminiscent of whenever Tobirama rants at him as a sounding board to figure out what he had missed or needed to do to solve his particularly difficult experiments.

Izuna seems to have finally gotten fed up with the silence when his arm jabs into Madara’s side. Madara breathes in deep to retaliate with a bellow, chakra flaring in indignance, but abruptly stops himself from doing so. His brilliant chakra—a warm campfire feeling like home that he had taken comfort in sensing since he had felt it as a babe—flickers for a moment and flares in self-affirmation.

Madara’s inhale feels like the rush of a wave in the silence of the room. His voice sounds like thunder when he finally speaks of the Blessed—children of Amaterasu, born with red eyes and white hair. He speaks of how it is a closely guarded secret of the Uchiha. He needn’t say how it could be, and likely had been, used against them.

The sudden agreement Madara had to the peace negotiations that day Tobirama stepped on the battlefield finally made sense.

But Tobirama does not expect the following words from the Uchiha at all.

“We, as Uchiha, Amaterasu’s chosen people, are honor-bound to offer the Blessed a place with the Uchiha. As an extension of our peace terms, we ask the Blessed to consider accepting a courtship by any Uchiha of their choosing.” The words are formal, clearly recited from somewhere, but their chakra ring true.

Hashirama doesn’t speak, chakra still swirling but now turned to Tobirama in inquiry. It’s his choice.

For his family’s peace—and perhaps even a chance to get to know more about the person whose chakra has comforted him in secret for so long. “I accept.”

His unseeing red eyes make contact with Madara’s before they bow their goodbyes. The older man’s warmhearthsun chakra flares in what feels like embarrassed attraction. Hm. How endearing.

His lips lift into a small smile.

He thinks he already knows who to pick.

**Author's Note:**

> some terms:  
> tsuka = the katana’s handle  
> kamon = family crest
> 
> OKAY BEFORE Y'ALL FORK ME I HAVE AN EXPLAINATION WHY IT GOT CLUNKY BY THE END:  
> plot: tries happening  
> my brain: bye bitch  
> me: NO WAIT DON'T ABANDON ME TOO  
> narrator: it did anyway  
> and that is my only excuse
> 
> in this universe, the river meeting happened bcos of a senju cousin. tobirama has been kept secret, assigned to missions that keep to the shadows and away from the limelight y’see
> 
> ach this is the first time i wrote a blind!tobirama i hope it read alright
> 
> this gave me so much trouble hrk (nothing makes sense i’m so sorry idk how negotiations work and neither was i willing to look up how to write politicking and such 💀) but at least it’s finally done also how the fuck do ppl write fight scenes absolute legends
> 
> [tumblr](https://antukini.tumblr.com/)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/antukini)


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